Suzanne Kipper paid Gaskins $1500 to kill Silas Yates, a wealthy farmer in Florence County, and he agreed. One night, Gaskins and a few of his ex-con friends, John Power, John Owens, and Diane Neely, planned and killed Yates, after which they buried his body. Shortly afterward, Diane Neely and her boyfriend, Avery Howard, attempted to blackmail Gaskins for $5000, or they would inform about the Yates’ murder. Gaskins killed both Howard and Neely and dumped their bodies.
Gaskins had another friend by the name of Walter Neely who helped Gaskins kill and dispose of two men who had attempted to steal from him. Gaskins showed Neely where he disposed of all the bodies he had killed, which he said totaled 181 people. Walter Neely eventually could not stand knowing that all those people were killed and went to the police.
Arrest, Conviction
After authorities obtained search warrants, they discovered nine bodies of several of Gaskins’ family and friends. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, but in November of 1976 his sentence was changed to life in prison when the South Carolina General Assembly death sentence rule of 1974 was altered to conform to the United States Supreme Court’s guidelines for the death penalty.
After being in prison for six years, Gaskins committed another murder that earned him the title of ‘Meanest Man in America.’ An inmate named Rudolph Tyner had once killed an elderly couple named Myrtle and Bill Moon during a robbery of their store that the Moon’s owned. Gaskin was hired as a hitman by Tony Cimo, the son of Myrtle Moon, to kill Tyner, which he did on September 2, 1982. Rather craftily, Gaskins’ rigged a device similar to a small radio in Tyner’s cell and told him that they would be able to communicate back and forth, but when Tyner held the speaker to his ear as Gaskins instructed him to do, the small device exploded as it contained a charge of C4. Gaskins later said that, “The last thing Tyner heard was me laughing.”
By this time, the death penalty was reinstated in the state of South Carolina.
Execution
While Gaskins was on death row he confessed to 181 murders. Whether he can be believed or not, we may never know. At 1:10am on September 6, 1991, Gaskins was electrocuted. His last words were, “I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go.”
Gary Ridgway
The Green River Killer
Victims (49 confirmed, confessed to 71)
Background
Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mary and Thomas Ridgway. He has two brothers, Thomas Jr., and Gregory.
As a youngster, Ridgway witnessed several violent disagreements between his overbearing mother and his father. Ridgway was a bed wetter, which is common in serial killers, and his mother would often humiliate and demean him in front of friends and family because of it. He had mixed feelings of sexual attraction towards his mother as well as annoyance. He was also not very bright as a child, testing at an IQ of only 82. He performed below academic standards for his age and had to repeat at least one grade twice.
When Ridgway was sixteen years old he led another boy into the woods where he stabbed him in the back and punctured his liver. Ridgway laughed as he left, and said, “I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.” Luckily, the boy survived.
Ridgway joined the U.S. Navy at twenty, shortly after marrying his high school sweetheart, Claudia Barrows, who was nineteen at the time. He was sent overseas to Vietnam where he spent a great deal of time with prostitutes and contracted gonorrhea. Although it irritated him, he did not bother using condoms and continued to have unprotected sex with them. Meanwhile, back home, his wife was also unfaithful and within a year their marriage ended.
After returning home from Nam, Ridgway met and married Marcia Winslow, but he could not prevent himself from being unfaithful to her either. He continued to frequent prostitutes even though, while doing so, he professed to be religious. He would go to church on Sunday, and preached the bible door to door; he would often cry after sermons, and annoy people at his work regarding the bible. While portraying this self-righteous religious persona, he would participate in sexual deviations with prostitutes and always wanted Marsha to have sex with him in public places. Regardless of all of this, his wife gave him a son, Matthew, in 1975.
Murders
It is believed that from 1982 to 1998, Ridgway took the lives of seventy-one women, but that number could be much higher. He was dubbed ‘The Green River Killer’ in the early 1980s when his first five victims were found in the Green River near Seattle in the state of Washington.
Most of Ridgway’s murders were prostitutes he’d picked up. He’d show them a picture of his son, take them to a secluded area or just to his truck, have sex with and then strangle them. Initially, he would strangle them using his hands, but found that when they fought back they would scratch or mark him, so he began to use a ligature instead.
A task force was set up by the King County Sheriff’s Office named the Green River Task Force. As this was obviously the work of a serial rapist/killer, and hence a Federal crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation soon became involved. The mid 1980s was also the start of what the F.B.I. calls ‘profiling.’ In short, profiling is a behavioral and investigative means that is intended to assist investigators to profile unidentified criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling, behavioral profiling, or criminal investigative analysis.
The Green River Killer later stated, when he was incarcerated, that he had killed so many women that he’d lost count. Most of his victims he would either dump in the Green River or in a wooded area that he would visit frequently. Ridgway would often return to his victims to have sex with the corpses (an act of necrophilia). He would also bring debris such as cigarette butts, and gum to contaminate the area, in case the police found the bodies. That way, they wouldn’t find just his D.N.A. alone.
Ridgway was arrested on a prostitution charge in 1982 and by 1983 he was a suspect in the Green River killings. He was given a polygraph test, however, and passed it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 1987 that police obtained a DNA test from Ridgway. In 1982, Ridgway killed sixteen women and twenty-three in 1983. He killed another ten after that, spread out over several years. Again, this are confirmed kills. Most likely the actual numbers were higher.
Judith Mawson married Ridgway in 1988 after dating for three years. Around this time, Ridgway stopped killing. He later said that once he was in a relationship with Mawson, the urge to kill was not there for him because he truly loved her.
As I said a couple paragraphs back, his DNA was collected in 1987 for analysis. Back then it took a long time to acquire comparison results. On November 30, 2001, the police arrived at Ridgway’s place of work, the Kenworth Truck Factory, with an arrest warrant in hand.
Arrest, Incarceration
Ridgway, the serial killer, was arrested for the murder of four women; Opal Mills, sixteen, killed on August 12, 1982; Marcia Chapman, thirty-one, killed on August 1, 1982; Cynthia Hinds, seventeen, killed on August 11, 1982; and Carol Ann Christensen, twenty-one, killed May 3, 1983. Obviously the F.B.I. have not connected Ridgway to all the killings yet because Carol Ann was actually his twenty-third killing. After the indictment, and more evidence was obtained, three more victims were added to the charges of murder: Wendy Coffield, sixteen, killed July 8, 1982 (Wendy was Ridgway’s first victim); Debra Bonner, twenty-three, killed July 25, 1982; and Debra Estes, fifteen, killed September 20, 1982.